Welcome to the UCI Labor Center! Workers are at the center of our outward-facing programs, research, and labor education. Through our work, we tackle the economic and social challenges facing working people and their families, raise up their accomplishments, and connect to their struggles for dignity and respect on the job. In our first year, we will launch UCI’s first-ever Labor Summer, a full-time paid internship program for UCI students that pairs them with a labor union or worker organization. Stay tuned as we develop more programming, research, and engagement opportunities that forward our mission of advancing workers’ rights and a worker-centered economy. As the inaugural faculty director, I am incredibly excited by the center’s potential to foster new ideas, new leaders, and new partnerships to improve the lives of working families in Orange County and beyond. Onward!
Virginia Parks
UCI Labor Center Mission
The UCI Labor Center builds the power of working people in Orange County and beyond by promoting, defending, and expanding workers’ rights. Through research, advocacy, policy innovation, education, and outreach, the center supports unions and worker organizations in their efforts to build a fair and racially just worker-centered economy.
Publications
- Housing and Food Insecurity among Resort Food Service Workers in Orange County, CA: Results from a Worker Survey
- Orange County Worker Profile
- Fossil fuel layoff: The economic and employment effects of a refinery closure on workers in the Bay Area
News
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Report on refinery closure provides guide for changing economy |
 UC Irvine Labor Center opens on campus |
Anteaters complete Labor Summer internships
National Jurist: UC Irvine opens new Labor Center
NBC Bay Area: What Happens When A Refinery Closes
The Sacramento Bee: After a California refinery closed, laid-off fossil fuel workers got hit with a ‘gut punch’
Futurity: Report: Laid Off Fossil Fuel Workers Need Support
UCI Social Ecology: UCI students start Labor Summer internships